This is intentional - as far as I can see Evasion gets more broken as it scales than protection does. To pick convenient numbers, increasing your Evasion from +6 vs your opponents attack to +8 reduces your chance of being hit by 25%. Increasing from +10 to +12 reduces it by 30%. The more Evasion you have, the more good having more does you until you're effectively unhittable. Reducing average damage taken by raising protection requires substantially larger increases to affect the big hitting enemies you care about in the late game. Protection is of course much more competitive earlier on, but the price is geared to the endgame. Happy to debate this point if someone else wants to crunch the maths and offer another perspective.

Bear in mind that my attempts to flatten out the smithing power curve have made a lot of previously overly expensive stuff much more reachable than before; the higher end may be pricier, but you should get more in the middle.

For instance, a sharp mithril longsword cost 22 before, and now costs 26. 22 was the same cost as a fire brand blade, and fire is resisted by some enemies. A fire brand mithril longsword now costs just 16, and you can have both fire brand and Cruel Blow for 22 (previously 29). Other possibilities for 22 points would include a 2d7 mithril longsword with rFear (previously 27); a vampiric mithril longsword with free action that slays dragons and raukar (previously 34); a mithril longsword that slays orcs, trolls, wolves, spiders, undead and raukar (previously 37).

Not everything is cheaper, but enough stuff is that it's worth playing round. With negative effects now discounting normal enchanted items, a Shadow Cloak of Winter's Chill is now just 13 Smithing: darkness and cold vulnerability trades off for gaining 3 points of Evasion and 2 of Stealth, and 13 points is achievable quite early, especially if you find a Grace potion. Armoursmithing has possibly gained more than weaponsmithing, with a bunch of abilities which exist on artifacts once again open to be Smithed.